San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: IPOs, Illumina, KFx Medical, & More

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The surge in U.S. initial public offerings has continued. According to the IPO experts at Renaissance Capital, there have been 44 healthcare IPOs across the country so far this year—the most in any sector. By my tally, at least 10 San Diego companies have filed for IPOs. Details on the latest filings are here, along with the rest of the local life sciences news from the past week.

—Celladon, the San Diego biopharmaceutical developing a gene therapy treatment for heart disease, has registered to go public. In a statement from the company, Celladon says the number of shares to be offered and pricing terms have yet to be decided. Celladon says it has filed its IPO registration statement with the SEC, but the filing has not yet become effective. Dozens of supporting exhibits are available on the SEC website, but not Celladon’s S-1 filing itself.

—San Diego’s Vital Therapies filed for an $86.3 million IPO, according to its SEC filing. The company said it is now conducting three late-stage clinical trials with its technology, an artificial liver. The company said its therapy is designed to help the patient’s own liver regenerate to a healthy state, or to stabilize the patient until transplant. Vital Therapies plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “VTL.” It did not disclose the stock price or volume it expects to trade.

—The flurry of S-1 registrations, which covers IPOs and other types of new stock offerings, also has included some convoluted life sciences deals. Mirati Therapeutics, for example, is a new San Diego biopharmaceutical company developing a line of oral cancer drugs based on kinase inhibitors that target specific mutations found only in cancer cells. In a filing with government regulators, Mirati says its stock began trading on the Nasdaq this summer (under the ticker symbol MRTX) following a stock swap with Montreal-based MethylGene that enabled the Canadian company to consolidate its operations and start over as a subsidiary of Mirati.

—Carlsbad, CA-based KFx Medical said a federal court jury in San Diego awarded KFx $29 million in a patent infringement lawsuit against … Next Page »

Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call (619) 669-8788 Follow @bvbigelow